Gertrude, Gertrude, What is the Answer?

A bit more on this ‘science can’t answer the why questions’ trope. Because it’s a surprisingly enduring and frequently-heard one, and yet it’s completely worthless. If it’s so worthless, why is it so enduring and so often repeated? Because not enough people say often enough how worthless it is? That must be it. Okay so let’s all start saying that more often, and maybe with our combined weight we can beat it to death.

What the silly phrase means is that science doesn’t permit itself to make up answers to why questions, whereas religion and ‘theology’ do. The idea that that makes religion and theology superior rather than grossly inferior is ludicrous.

You could play that game in all sorts of ways (which means: behold, a reductio ad absurdum approaches). Ask a friend: ‘How many grains of sand are on this beach?’ ‘Don’t know.’ Shake head sadly – assert random number. ‘I can answer and you can’t.’ Repeat procedure. ‘How many leaves on that tree? What was the name of Shakespeare’s pet iguana? What did Napoleon eat for lunch on March 20 1784? What is the meaning of life?’ Rational people say they don’t know; you invent an answer; which party has a problem? Which party ‘can’ ‘answer’ the question?

And then, the answer that religion and ‘theology’ give is not an answer anyway, because the question is just as askable as it ever was. ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ ‘Because God.’ ‘Why is there God?’ ‘____’

19 Responses to “Gertrude, Gertrude, What is the Answer?”

Well, there is a big market for answers to the question “why” out there – Yet science cannot, as you correctly point out – make up the answer from whole cloth. The answers science does provide in turn, strike a large segment of the population as pretty pedestrian and unsatisfactory.

Enter religion. Let’s face it here: For a large majority of the global population it won’t matter squat to their daily lives if their personal beliefs regarding “the creation of the world” or “the origin of humans” are supported by facts or not.

What does matter a lot to each of us is emotional well-being. And if holding a factually unsupported belief is emotionally attractive (Averting death angst, etc.) – why not go ahead and do it?

Understood; but that’s a separate question. The point is that the way Philip Blond and all the other religion-flatterers who use that trope phrase the matter is a cheat. The fact is that they can no more answer the question than anyone else can, but they pretend they can. That’s not honest.

Agreed. And it needs to be pointed out / slapped down when they overstep certain bounds.

But because of the fact that this stuff is comforting / attractive to many (most?), and there is no corrective action whatsoever taken towards those who indulge in it (Private marginal cost is pretty much zero), we’re going to have to keep coping with it, I’m afraid. Plus, when I get old, that self-deception stuff might start to look good, who knows?

PS.

Accusing the promoters of “whyism” of dishonesty is a bit over the top. They probably believe in what they are saying. Thoughtlessness more like it.

“But because of the fact that this stuff is comforting / attractive to many (most?), and there is no corrective action whatsoever taken towards those who indulge in it”

Well that’s part of my point. That’s why it’s (long past) time to push back.

I’m not so sure about the over the top bit. Surely someone at some point has told Philip Blond that he can’t answer the why questions either. And if it is just thoughtlessness – then frankly it comes to the same thing: it’s dishonest of someone that thoughtless to set himself up as an expert, to go on Night Waves, to say pseudo-profound things about science.

Oh all right, maybe that is a little over the top. But really – thoughtlessness is not a qualification for someone to do the kind of thing Blond is doing. He has no business being thoughtless if he’s going to make pronouncements like that!

Not sure it’s so clear-cut either way. The response to “Why God” can be, “He’s logically necessary” and then pursued using some variation of Aquinas’s ontological argument that can’t be used for “the universe.” That said, I’m not convinced that it’s demonstrable that science can’t answer questions of the “why is there something rather than nothing.” Just because scientific method is generally regarded as purely an examination of causal relationships doesn’t mean that a materialist answer is out of the question. A Sartrean response, namely, that there’s no reason, is a perfectly valid response and one from which a series of consequences arise. Not science in the traditional sense, but Sartre nevertheless was a materialist.

Of course, natural science asks and answers “why” questions: what else are explanations for? [Edited for length and cogency] Walter Benjamin, would hold on to the resonance of theology, even as they abandoned its contents: it affords a perspective by which to consider (the pitfalls of) human destiny.

Yea – guess you are right. Just kind of resigned when it comes down to the issue of whether or not “Whyism” can be significantly reduced from current levels.

“Surely someone at some point has told Philip Blond that he can’t answer the why questions either.”

True, but I’m prepared to bet that he actually believed whatever mush he put forward in response to that kind of comment. Us humans are pretty good at self-deception, after all… (Especially when the costs are low and the benefits large!)

“He has no business being thoughtless if he’s going to make pronouncements like that!”

“I’m not thoughtless! I just have a different perspective on life, where us humans are merely part of a greater scheme, yaddayadda….” And so on.

Nope – science can’t – and shouldn’t – cover all bases. Still, that doesn’t mean that we should be uncritical and accepting of everything that doesn’t concern science. (Although I am a bit resigned when it comes to the prospects of fighting nothing-based mush of the kind outlined in the post below this one.)

“Just kind of resigned when it comes down to the issue of whether or not “Whyism” can be significantly reduced from current levels.”

Hmm. The way I figure it, there’s plenty of time to be resigned once we’re dead. Until then I figure we might as well fight back. Actually, I figure we ought to fight back. I don’t see what else we can do. If we let them get away with it they just do more and more of it.

Yes, I too can believe that he really believes the stuff he says. But I also still think he at least ought to be aware how feeble the basic argument is – if he’s going to pontificate in public.

Part of the problem is that we’re all so thoroughly schooled to “respect” people’s “beliefs” that we don’t point out how feeble such arguments are, so the feebles just get reinforced in their feebleness. It’s a meme thing. We need a counter-meme, that it is necessary and useful to challenge people’s beliefs when they are both silly and harmful.

We need a counter-meme, that it is necessary and useful to challenge people’s beliefs when they are both silly and harmful.

What about beliefs that are ‘silly’ but not necessarily harmful or may even be adaptive in an evolutionary sense? If I refrain from mugging my neighbour because I believe that God would be upset if I did and bundle me off to hell for all eternity — well, that may be irrational, but it is not in any meaningful sense harmful.

One doesn’t have to ‘respect’ beliefs of this kind, but nor does one have to devote one’s intellectual energies to refuting world views that don’t harm other people, and may in fact help keep the peace.

Of course, it’s an entirely different business if my God tells me that he’ll be really browned off if I DON’T start slaying infidels at the earliest opportunity…

People like Philip Blond getting air time to tell the world that science is dangerous because it can’t answer the why questions do harm to the cognitive faculties of the populace.

And there are myriad other harms religion does. It also does some goods, but too often at the price of harms.

“If I refrain from mugging my neighbour because I believe that God would be upset if I did and bundle me off to hell for all eternity — well, that may be irrational, but it is not in any meaningful sense harmful.”

Yes it is. Because if that is really the only reason you refrain from mugging your neighbour, then you are permanently vulnerable to simply deciding that God will be upset if you don’t, and acting accordingly. A completely formulaic, arbitrary reason for behaving well can at any time become a formulaic arbitrary reason for behaving badly – because it’s not based on anything.

There is an old story that educators share the world over (actually I read it in a book but can’t remember where) and it goes thus: when a kid asks you one of these “why” questions (typical question would be: “Daddy, why the clouds?”), never answer by a cause but by a consequence. Otherwise you’ll end up explaining the functionning of the whole universe in reverse (“Yes but, daddy, why this?”) when it’s a lot easier to say “To water the plants, son!” If he/she carries you can always finish with : “So you have something to eat and don’t die of starvation. Would you like to die, son?”

So I guess what I am trying to say is: no John, science doesn’t answer the “why” questions because it never asks them in the first place. A typical scientific question is “how” or “what”, not “why” and that’s because “why” implies the existence of a plan or at least a goal which we cannot prove (the universe is still an emergent system) and scientists are grown-up.

In the same way, there is no logical difference between not mugging your neighbour and slaying the infidels, if God ordered you to do both. They also can both be survival strategies. So, how do you justify your refusal? Is religion a mean of crowd control, an anti-riot device like the water cannon?

PS: my apologies if this has been said before, I just came back to reading B&W after a long absence!

Just so, about science not asking the why questions in the first place. Norman Levitt has an excellent chapter on ‘Teleology’ in his book Prometheus Bedeviled which is relevant to the whole idea. Humans have a hard time eradicating the idea that there is a why, somewhere, however far in the background – but that doesn’t make the idea a sound one.

Going by the shots from St. Peter’s square – yes, and a very efficient one. More subtle than a water cannon though.

As for diverting away from the “why”-questions, pretty neat trick. Problem is people are going to keep asking them anyways. As OB points out, humans love to think in terms of agents and causes – plus there is the whole issue of angst relief…

Still, as long as there is at least a bit of a stigma associated with mushy thinking in the upper reaches of society, we should do O.K. Not to say that’s the case in all quarters today though…

I’ve dealt with small children asking “why?” questions; in fact, I’ve even dealt with psychotics asking the same. But I’m not sure of the point of your response. The broad notion of the “economic” nature of scientific explanation simply serves to delimit the enterprise and the kinds of questions it is relevant to, which, yes, includes certain kinds of “why?” question, as it would be completely artificial to deny that, as well as begging the question, both historically and in contemporary terms, of where the scientific enterprise comes from. (One stock answer is curiosity, and should that be stigmatized?) On the other hand, I did indicate that “what?” questions are precisely disabled, at least partially, by science, and to reduce matters to “how?” questions invites an instrumentalism that I think is damaging to the intrinsic value of the enterprise. As for that old bugbear teleology, it comes intrinsically from the orientation of human agency, which is not to say that it can not be reflected upon and stripped of any reification of its “naturalness”. But, that said, science itself, in the relevant sense, is “teleological”, which is to say that, contrary to a claim made at B&W several posts below, there is no such thing as pure, disinterested inquiry, since all inquiry must have an aim, which structures the inquiry. (The contrast case, was “pseudo-inquiry”, by which probably was meant apologetics, but, of course, if one already knows the answer, there’s no need for inquiry. On the other hand, the distinction does not serve to authorize, save by rhetorical contrast, the claim to disinterestedness, nor for that matter the identification of such “disinterestedness” with that intentionless state of being called the “truth”.) One way to go about inquiry, however, is to examine the question itself, rather than immediately casting about ad hoc for answers. That way, one gets a sense of what would count as an answer, from the structure of the question itself, and correspondingly, a sense of the reasonableness or legitimacy of the question. For example, “Why are there things that are, rather than nothing at all?”, in fact, was the negative form of Leibniz’ “principle of sufficient reason”, which stated in its positive form: “all beings that are have a ground.” But what is the nature of that “ground” that it should constitute “sufficient reason”? And how does it add on to or secure the “beingness” of beings? And is there a ground to that ground? Or, perhaps the “nothing at all” plays a role, after all, beyond any assertion of “beingness”? Such questions may well be nonsensical. Or perhaps they serve only to mark and express an experience of wonder at the world. But I don’t think they can be proscribed, without any consideration, in the name of survival, maturity, or definite answers. “Questions must come to a halt somewhere”, said Wittgenstein. But the point is to find that “somewhere”.

“but, of course, if one already knows the answer, there’s no need for inquiry.”

That misses the point – which I would have thought was clear enough. I’ll give the Haack quotation again.

“And to inquire is to try to discover the truth of some question. But pseudo-inquiry is a phenomenon no less common than pseudo-belief…Peirce identifies one kind of pseudo-inquiry when he writes of ‘sham reasoning’ [Collected Papers, I. 57-58]: making a case for the truth of some proposition your commitment to which is already evidence- and argument-proof. He has in mind philosophers who devise elaborate metaphysical underpinnings for theological propositions which no evidence or argument would induce them to give up.”

The goal of the inquiry is not to find out the answer but to make a case for the answer – so your comment is irrelevant.

All right. Sorry to have omitted chapter and verse. And that last post was a bit murky at the end. So, to recapitulate: 1) proscibing questions based on the prior determination of their sense amounts to (an exercise of) authoritarian fiat; 2) the demand for “positive” answers, as if such assertions amounted to a grasp of “beingness”, ignores that any such assertions bear further implications and follow-through; 3), taking 1) and 2) together, some of the most “interesting” questions involve the delimitiation and differentiation of domains of inquiry, which, according to “di maestro di color qui sano”, involve dialectical rather than analytical syllogisms. It was noteworthy that neither OB, nor anyone else coherently responded to my basic point about the “economic” nature of scientific explanation.

(By the way, I did google Ms. Haack and read a couple of reviews. I wasn’t surprised. Perhaps OB doesn’t realize what a complicated figure C.S. Peirce was and is.)

Rorty was denounced as an “evil” man, because of his mere rhetoric. But no understanding was evinced of his prior arguments, nor of the fact that his “rhetoric” was a deliberately “therapeutic” approach to what he regards as mistaken fixations. Criticizing what one fails to understand hardly amounts to cogency.